The Way West (24 page)

   The men smoked quiet, Indian and white alike, speaking only stray words that Summers put into one tongue or the other, for the solemn talking was over and the solemn smoking. Evans sat with him, and Patch and Gorham and Carpenter and Daugherty, and White Hawk and half a dozen of his men. Yes, the hunting was good, for sheep and deer and elk, and the fish were big and many. White Hawk would see that the Shoshones did not steal from their friends. He had posted soldiers to watch. How many miles to Fort Hall? How many sleeps to the British house, White Hawk?
   No air stirred, not a breath. The fire they had built grayed with ash, just the heart of it alive. And no noise sounded except the tiny hum of mosquito wings and the lazy words they spoke. The children were abed, and the women waited their men, and the dogs were quiet, and the wolves and coyotes not yet tuning up. It was as if the earth and sky listened while the question turned in Summers.
   Why did he ask instead of act? He didn't believe in the sin the preacher did. Men and women were made different for a purpose, like hes and shes of any breed, and mostly he had done what he wanted and got up and forgotten, except now and then for a thought of the half-breeds he might have left behind. But they would fare as well as Indians and better than a heap of whites. The Indians never shamed a bastard, nor called it wrong to let a brother have a woman. They had a right to their ideas, like Weatherby to his; and mountain men took what they found and let the questions go.
   But still he asked and, asking, knew it was the age in him that asked, for young Dick Summers would have gone ahead. Age asking not what was right and proper but was he an old fool who thought to catch the past by lying with a squaw, who thought to find the lost, high spirit under cover of a robe, in the body of a woman who would be lousy but also young and tender and warm for him. He knew the answer. He would cover her and lie back and realize it was no use except for the minute's now-dead fever, and thought would circle in his head so that he couldn't rest full and easy as of old. But still . . . But still . . .
   Overhead he heard the whistle of wings, and of a sudden the name came to him, the name of her who'd been with him there on the Popo Agie's banks. Broken Wing, it was, as near as he had been able to make out from the Crow. The One with the Broken Wing.
   A breeze fanned the graying fire, reddening the ash, and all at once the Indian dogs woke up, baying to the sky.
   He guessed old fires had a right to shine, if they still could, and dogs to holler for the moon.
   He got up.
   "What you smilin' at, Dick?" Evans asked.
   "Was I smilin'? Just feelin' good, I reckon."
 

LIJE EVANS had only part of his mind on hunting. Another part of it roamed around, thinking what he had seen and done and felt since leaving Independence far back in the spring. And still another part had stayed at Big Timber, where the train had camped early so the stock could rest, feed and get ready for the leaner miles ahead. It seemed he couldn't ever wrench all his thought away from the train. Try as he might, worry would come sneaking on him -about the state of the wagons and the stoutness of the oxen, about the Fairmans with their grief, about the hard going that lay before, about the great Columbia and the wicked rapids he had heard about. Whenever he was away from the train, like now, he had the feeling maybe he was needed. Maybe something had come up. Being captain put a duty on a man he couldn't take leave of even for a little while without the feel of guilt.
   He rode Nellie along the bottom, looking to the prairie and the brush and to the ridges on the side for sign of antelope or elk or mountain sheep. It wasn't that the company was short of meat especially, not with Summers to hunt it out, not with game plenty and trout hungry in the Bear. It was just that he wanted to get away for a while, to slide out from under the weight of the captaincy and get his breath and refresh himself. Most of the things he had thought to do while back in Independence he hadn't done except in piddles if at all. He had shot two buffalo on the Platte and one of them a tough old bull that wouldn't even boil tender. He had brought in one antelope. That was all. He hadn't wet a fishline in the Bear. He had had time for fun, he reckoned, but not the notion for it. Duty fretted him too much -and for no good reason now.
   Everything was fine. There wasn't a case of sickness in camp. No fevers. No bowel troubles. No one wounded by Indians or hurt by accident. The train was just lazing along the Bear, but for a purpose -to strengthen horses and cattle and especially oxen for what Dick said were stone deserts high above the Snake. They had crossed the Bear twice, to round a mountain that jagged in from the east, and had saved a hard climb by it, though adding to the miles. But the fords were safe enough. The Bear was a slow and peaceful river, with trees growing on it to float the leaky wagons with if need be. He wished the Snake would be as easy, knowing that it wouldn't.
   Yes, he told himself for the tenth or twentieth time, the train was in good case. He had a right to hunt, though it seemed he'd go back empty-handed. The people had got along fair with the Indians, though the Snakes were quick and sneaky-handed and had made off with pots and kettles and knives and a rifle and some pieces of clothing, including the many-pocketed coat that Tadlock liked to wear. Tadlock had got sore as a sore-tailed bear and grew even sorer when old White Hawk couldn't get his men to give their plunder back. Said White Hawk could make them if he set himself to it. Said like as not White Hawk had the coat himself, which Evans didn't believe. He figured White Hawk had tried, both to stop the stealing and find the stolen things. It was just that a word wouldn't stay a thief or make a thief fork over, in red or white crowds either one. But it wasn't any use to argue so with Tadlock, who thought a head man wasn't head unless the rest obeyed.
Some of the others of the party were ill-natured from their losses, too -Daugherty, who missed his old flintlock, and Holdridge, who lost a knife and bridle, and Brewer, who wanted back his cookall, and Shields, who said his woman turned up shy a skirt. McBee hadn't lost a thing but talked mad just the same.
   Well, Evans thought while his eye ranged, they would get over it. This was too good a country to stay mad in. Soreness didn't team with the wild oats and barley and rye that softened Nellie's steps, nor with the flax that waved blue in the grasses, nor with a kind sun. He pulled Nellie up and let her reach for a bite of feed and sat quiet while she savored it and the green juices slobbered from her mouth. It was too good a country, where the children ran safe, chewing balsam gum and rolling rocks down hillsides, where the women tinkered happy over food seasoned with wild yarbs and talked about the sermon preached by Weatherby last Sabbath. That was one day, anyhow, the train had given up to worship. Weatherby had gone again to Ephesians for his subject, exhorting on the verse, "Awake, thou that sleepest." In a thieving country, Evans thought, it was good advice in a way that Weatherby didn't mean.
   He let Nellie foot along aimless while she cropped at the grass. Of all the land that he had seen this seemed the richest and the peacefulest -woods, water, pasture, soil laid down for a plow, all closed in, all protected by hills high-rising in the quiet sky. It was better than the Green, better than the Sweetwater and, God knew, better than the Platte. Maybe it was better than Oregon, except a man would feel he lived upon an island. This place was Oregon by the reckoning of Summers, who set the line between the waters of the east and west. And it would be settled one day. It was bound to be settled, he knew now. No keeping it from being. People would come west and more people would come west, as he had himself, not thinking exactly why but knowing just the push of feeling, as if God Himself had willed it. He could see them, wagon after wagon, train on train, winding up the Platte, toiling up the mountains, fording the protesting rivers. Some of them would sicken and some of them would die, but the great company would come on, for the thing was greater than any grief. The pictured line caught a man's imagination. It made him wonder. It made him somehow big.
   Evans touched Nellie with his heel and she lifted her head as if to see did he mean it and fell to cropping again, and he didn't care. He didn't guess it was for hunting that he had come out.
   A new time, he thought. History written on the land by the turn of wagon wheels. A new, good time to all but men like Summers, who couldn't feel the deep excitement of it. They had been turned different, these men, shaped past changing by tools now wearing out, by beaver and Indians.and danger and loneness. They were like deep drammers; what they thirsted after was more of what they'd had.
   Still, maybe not with Dick. Maybe he would come to see, maybe settle in Oregon as Evans hoped and be the important man he could be. There wasn't anything beyond him if he set his head to it, governor or Congress or whatever. And he could still hunt some and sometimes pitch a camp and so lead a balanced life.
   Now that Dick had come to mind, he knew one reason why he kept saying things were all right with the train. It was because Dick had drawn off from him somehow, leaving him, he felt, to manage almost all alone. Dick would come if called; he would help if help was asked; but still he'd quit the old close teaming that kept the spirit stout. He was different from before, different in a way that Evans couldn't quite explain, as if the sight of things known long ago had won him off from interest in the train. Dick was, Evans thought while he wondered if it was just a kind of jealousy that made him think so, a little like a man who saw an old sweetheart and up and left his marriage bed for her. He snorted inside when the thought was formed. Be damned if he wasn't womanish, womanish and weak! He would handle the train by himself then. It was about time he learned to stand alone.
   But still he couldn't keep his head off Dick. Below Big Timber the train had met up with four of Bridger's men, four dark and weathered men who talked spare in front of strangers and, by themselves, spoke language strange to settled ears, saying "this child's thinkin' " and " 'pears to this coon" and "we was froze for meat, we was," and "wagh."
   Evans had sat around their fire with Dick at night while Dick's whisky got drunk up and memories worked and tongues loosened, and he had felt like an outsider even with Dick, for here was a side of Dick he didn't know. Here, glimpsed in the talk, was a strange, wild life that Dick had been a part of and a big part, too. 'Member the time the goddam Crows lifted our cache, Summers, and it was you went to make medicine and came back with the furs and a smart-looking squaw to boot? Never could figure the way of that, Summers, 'less you catched the squaw in a berry patch and showed her what a mink you was and got her help in stealin' back our plews. She was gone on you. She was now. Purty as paint and a gone beaver on you. An' damn if you didn't traipse off with her. You was allus kind of a loner, I'm thinkin'. ...'Member that nigger you had to rub out on the Siskadee, back in 'twenty-six or 'twenty-eight or sometime? Took so much of him, you did, and dast him to irons and give him the best of it and kilt him afore his finger could bend. Wagh and Jesus Christ! Them was fat days. ... Savin' that cheerwater for kingdom come? This hoss is terrible dry. . . . Ain't so poor a bull hisself, this child ain't. Got two calves with the Nepercies and a purty Shoshone heifer that's camped with that there preacher-doctor, Whitman, by Walla Walla, and's gettin' manners rubbed off on her.
   Hearing them, seeing the side of Dick he didn't know, Evans said to himself that Summers was just shaking hands with the man he had been. And over the meals at camp, where Dick sat silenter than usual, not making fun with Brownie or teasing Rebecca, he said Dick was only reliving old times and would come out of it. But still he felt the touch of loss.
   He pulled up Nellie's head, thinking he would never get meat if he just sat on his tail and let his head spin, and then, against the scant-grown hillside, he saw movement. It was an elk, a young bull by the looks of him, too distant for a shot.
   He reined Nellie over to some brush and circled around under cover and came to the ridge and tied Nellie in a patch of trees where thieving eyes wouldn't find her easy and went ahead on foot, wishing while he stepped that he could hunt like Dick. Let a critter show itself and Dick became part of the land, noiseless and unseeable, like a fawn in the grass or a snake sunning in the sand.
He slid under some branches that wept over the game trail he followed and saw the young bull standing in an open place ahead. He pulled one foot even with the other but didn't raise his rifle. It was as if he waited for the notion to shoot, for the arms to want to lift and the eye to want to sight. Waiting, he thought how much the grown mind ranged. Take a boy or a young man, now, and he would think but of the killing, and his breath would breathe eager in his chest and his hand tighten on his rifle. He wouldn't parcel out his brain, to the bull and Dick Summers and the camp and maybe troubles ahead, and wasn't this a fine day, though, in a fine land. He wouldn't see the blue flax waving nor the sun patterned on the grass. The bull would blind him to all else, the bull and the brown hide and the young horns and the liquid eye. Sometimes it seemed too bad that life had to live on life.
   The elk leaped with the ball and fell thrashing in the brush, and Evans went to him and bled and rough-gutted him and then walked back for Nellie.
   Later he led Nellie toward camp, turning now and then to see that the elk was riding all right slung across the saddle. She didn't like the looks or smell of it and kept snorting as it shifted to her step. "Whoa, now, Nellie, that there bull won't bite you." It was a fair load for her even if there had been room for him besides.
   It wasn't suppertime yet, though the mountains had shut the sun off, when camp came into view. It was a good sight, he thought as he neared it -the wagons squatted into rest, the stock grazing easy to eastward, the tents light against the green of woods and turf, a feather of smoke rising, untouched by any breeze. It would be a pretty evening -pretty, too, for the mosquitoes that swarmed out as the cool came on. Looked like there was always something to make you wish it different. The sight of camp reminded him he was hungry. He hoped Becky had made a stew like she promised, with wild onions cut up in it and maybe dumplings floating. You couldn't beat her for stews.
   He was within a yell of camp before he noticed the men gathered nearer by the river. He thought, while a little uneasiness turned in him, how poor a mountain man he was. Dick would have spotted the men first thing.
   There were eight or ten of them, close-grouped by a tree that held a branch above their heads. Tadlock he made out as he walked closer, and Brother Weatherby, then Brewer and McBee. He didn't try to single out more, for now he saw an Indian with them, hands behind him, naked from the crotch strap up.
   Brewer held a rifle on him. Weatherby and Tadlock were arguing. Tadlock had a rope.
   The fact came slow to Evans, and then he hardly believed. He looked to the wagons for signs of everyday. No one moved there except for Mrs. Brewer, shooing her young ones out of sight. He couldn't see another soul until his eye fixed on the tents and saw the heads of women poking. He dropped Nellie's reins.
   The men didn't notice him until he spoke. "What you all aimin' to do?"
   Tadlock turned around, the rope tight-held in his hand, and a quick displeasure showed on his face. "You've got eyes, haven't you?"
   Weatherby turned, too. "They're going to hang a man." His long finger poked at Tadlock. "I warn you, Brother Tadlock, you'll be breaking the Commandments. The sin will be on you."
   "If it's a sin it will be on all of us."
   "We kin stand it," McBee said. "What you want us to do, say thankee to a thief?"
   "Thou shalt not kill."
   "Do we argue foriver with this preacher?" It was Daugherty asking, the heat in him giving an extra Irish to his words.
   "Go away!" Tadlock waved at Weatherby. "You've done your duty. Now go away!"
   While they yammered at one another, the Indian stood quiet except for his eyes. They went from face to face. He wasn't much more than a boy, Evans thought, an Indian boy no older much than Brownie, standing naked except for a tag of leather, standing dignified with a molty feather in his hair, hiding the fear of death if fear was in him while old palefaces fixed to string him up.
   "What'id he steal?" Evans asked.